AP Photo/The Weinstein CompanyIn this film publicity image released by The Weinstein Company, Colin Firth, left, and Julianne Moore are shown in a scene from, “A Single Man.”

Some movies are well-directed.

“A Single Man” is, mostly, art-directed.

The cut of a dress, the color of a billboard, the perfect rosebud lips of a young college student — there isn’t a detail or close-up here that doesn’t look as fussed over and endlessly tweaked as a spread in Vogue.

A Single Man (PG-13) Weinstein (99 min.) Directed by Tom Ford. With Colin Firth, Julianne Moore. Now playing in New York.

This is fitting because the film is the much-heralded debut of Tom Ford, former fashion guru to Gucci. And it’s also annoying because it distracts us from the story, which is not pretty at all and shouldn’t be presented as some precious collectible.

Colin Firth — in a terrific performance — is George Falconer, a charming, erudite Englishman and professor of literature at a Southern California college. Geroge is gay and grieving his long-time lover, who was killed in a senseless car accident. But this is 1962, and not only is this the love that “dare not speak its name,” it is also a grief cannot be expressed.

So, in a sharply concise approach — adapted from Christopher Isherwood’s novel, itself probably owing more than a nod to Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” — it follows George around for a day as he does everything except the one thing he needs to do: let himself feel.

This is a fine opportunity for Firth, a terrific actor who, early in his career, got typecast as the terribly decent chap. If Hugh Grant always played the charmer who was an awful lot of fun until he turned out to be a cad, Firth was the nice fellow who stuck around.

“A Single Man” rescues Firth from that comfortable rut by giving him back the passion he so nicely kept just under wraps in 1995’s “Pride and Prejudice” — as well as some of the prickly humor that occasionally poked out in darker, lesser-known films like “Apartment Zero” and “Where the Truth Lies.”

In “A Single Man,” Firth is contained for the most part — because he has to be. But in those rare moments when it’s safe to admit his own grief, George opens up like a broken dam, and the tears and pain and frustration pour out. It’s a fine, full performance, and a near lock for an Oscar nomination.

Julianne Moore, though — outfitted with some kicky “Mad Men” clothes and a shaky English accent — seems more like a precocious child’s idea of a British diva than the species itself. George’s former (and potential) lovers are an indeterminate parade of pretty faces, too.

And that’s the problem at the crux of the entire picture: Everything is too perfect, too precise, too managed. The winter road where George’s lover meets his end — seen in dreamy flashback — is as charming as a Christmas store window. The young student who pursues Falconer off-campus is fetishized into a Playgirl spread of details — shaggy blond hair, thick sweater, yearning eyes.

Clearly, Ford loves Hollywood and wants to make movies, but what he’s made here is the slick advertising campaign for one, full of gorgeous close-ups and “there’s-our-poster!” marketing moments — but little of the reality and roughness of life.

Firth is brilliant, though. And if the movie sometimes looks like an advertisement, at least it’s forthright about the gay romance at the core — unlike the movie’s actual ads, which tried early on to make it look as if this were a story about Firth’s romance with Moore.

It’s an irony that George himself could write a paper on. Nearly 50 years after the setting of this forbidden romance, this is still the love that dare not speak its name — at least, not in general-audience trailers.